Mike's Top 10 of 2009 Part Two

Drumroll please.... Following up #'s 10 through 6, here is the rest of my list for the year. What were your favourites?

5. Moon (dir. Duncan Jones)

Made for I think about a buck-fifty, Jones’ Moon is a miniature hard-sci-fi gem. Sam Rockwell plays a lunar miner isolated in a frozen station with only messages from his wife and a Kevin-Spacey-voiced AI to keep him company. A quiet triumph of low-budget, high-concept filmmaking and old-school effects techniques, Moon provided me one of the year’s best moments when I got to see a little model moon rover bumping along the dusty ground looking like something from Alien or 2001. Full review here.

4. Anvil!: The Story of Anvil (dir. Sacha Gervasi)

Entertaining and inspiring in equal measures, Gervasi’s touching doc can pierce through even the most sardonic ironic armor and reveal the beauty of friendship and hair metal. Two best friends promise to rock together forever, and do, despite all indications that they should stop. Original and irresistible. Full review here.

3. Antichrist (dir. Lars von Trier)

The best horror movie in years, maybe decades, and the best-looking one maybe probably ever. Crazy, psychotically violent, disturbing and ridiculous all at the same time, with two of the best performances of the year from Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Original review is right here.

2. Inglourious Basterds (dir. Quentin Tarantino)

Tarantino’s best film since Pulp Fiction, and his most entertaining since Reservoir Dogs. Basterds redefines the scope, style and cinematic grammar of the war movie, mixing jumbled-up genre conventions and anachronistic Giorgio Moroder songs with a little ultraviolence from a bunch of beautiful, vengeful, doomed heroes. Right here is the full review.

1. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (dir. Wes Anderson)

As Anderson’s career has progressed, his characters have gotten so capital-Q Quirky that by The Life Aquatic, they seemed less human than some weird, abstracted simulacra. Quirk-bots. Which is why his latest, a stop-motion animated adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic, seems like a revelation, the union of peanut butter and jam, cookies and milk: a triumphant marriage of style and substance. Pure cinematic joy. Full review? Ici.